Coming to Al Jazeera America Presents this Sunday, January 19: I LEARN AMERICA
Gitte Peng and Jean-Michel Dissard’s portrait of youthful new Americans had its world premiere at AFI Docs last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, Nantucket, Denver, and St Louis, as well as several community screenings around the country.
I previously wrote about the doc out of AFI Docs for Indiewire, saying:
Another title debuting here also addressing immigration is Gitte Peng and Jean-Michel Dissard’s appealing look at Brooklyn’s International High School at Lafayette, which provides a safe and nurturing space for new immigrants. Focusing on five teenagers hailing from Poland, Pakistan, Guatemala, Myanmar, and the Dominican Republic who contend with learning new languages, traditional parental expectations, and immigration status, the film shows the importance of programs like this in shaping the next generation of Americans. Perhaps most significantly, Peng and Dissard demonstrate commonalities across cultural differences, as their subjects face familiar high school rituals like prom and graduation, or schoolwork-affecting distractions in the form of sports and girls.
what (not) to doc 